Term limits with twist

A new citizen initiative petition aimed at limiting the terms of Utah's top elected officials will be filed this week, while an old petition on the same subject seems headed for defeat.

Monday, GOP activist Mark Towner said he soon will file an initiative with the state Elections Office that would — if passed by residents in the November election — give candidates for Congress and top state offices the opportunity to list on the ballot next to their names whether they pledge to self-limit their terms in office.

Meanwhile, Bart Grant, head of Utah Term Limits, said he supports Towner's efforts even as his own "strict term limit" initiative petition fails to make it on the 2004 general election ballot.

"Right now, I'd have to say it won't make it," said Grant, who filed his own citizen initiative petition last March.

Unlike Towner's, Grant's would be a law banning an incumbent from seeking another term after a set time in office.

"I don't have the financial resources to gather all the signatures I need" to get the proposed law on the ballot, admitted Grant.

Unlike 1994, when Grant and other supporters got a term-limit law on the ballot, the national group U.S. Term Limits is not financially backing his effort this year, Grant said. "There's always hope, but it doesn't look good," he said.

Towner hopes his "voluntary pledge" term-limit initiative may find a legislative sponsor in the 2004 Legislature, which convenes next month. And if it passes there, Towner won't have to go through the considerable trouble of gathering more than 78,000 signatures of registered voters, 10 percent of whom must come from 26 of the 29 Senate districts across the state.

For you see, not only did the 2003 Legislature — two hours before adjournment — repeal the old 12-year term-limit law, it also drastically changed the citizen initiative petition statute, making it harder, most agree, for someone to get a law adopted at the polls.

That citizen initiative petition law is now before the Utah Supreme Court, with opponents saying it is unconstitutionally prohibitive to residents who want to bypass the 104-member Legislature and pass a law directly.

In any case, Towner said, "it only makes sense" to allow voters to see on the ballot who has promised to self-limit their own terms by retiring from office after a certain time.

"It is really a question of whether we want citizens" in top state and congressional posts "or whether we want career politicians," he said.

But state Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, who sponsored during the 2003 Legislature a repeal of the old 12-year term-limit law, said Towner's "voluntary pledge" idea is a bad one — as is the idea of term limits in general.